


Mercy

by RedTeamShark



Series: With My Little Eye [3]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Attempted Murder, Discussed Torture, Epic Bromance, Gen, Merc Bromance, Mercenaries, Spies & Secret Agents, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-07-29 12:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7685437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedTeamShark/pseuds/RedTeamShark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael’s taught me a lot of things. He’s even taught me a few things about myself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> Direct counterpart to Spy Games

I’ve learned a lot of things since I met Michael Jones.

He was with me the first time I interrogated someone. He was the one who showed me the most painful places to put a knife to a man, to get him to talk. Michael was also the one that taught me that while pain is scary, the _threat_ of pain is scarier. Once a person is in pain, he’ll say anything to stop the pain from happening—he’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear, even if it’s not true. If a person isn’t in pain yet, if a person still has a clear head, he’ll tell the truth to avoid pain. Especially when he sees how serious you are about harming him.

Michael was always serious when he threatened to hurt people.

I’ve taught him things as well, like how to tune out all the interior sounds that your body makes, how to only hear exterior things. How very silent a human being can be, all senses tuned outward to detect even the smallest change in the environment. He’d taken to the lessons with enthusiasm, wanting to learn anything that would make him better at his job. Anything that would extend his life, be it by years or just seconds.

We spend a lot of time together, Michael and I, even when we’re not working. We live in the same apartment complex, one of the many properties owned by our boss Geoff (though I don’t think Michael knows that little tidbit), so it makes sense to hang out. Sometimes we’ll go to the pool together, or stay in and watch movies and drink. We’ll play video games in his living room, or stumble back to my place after the bars close and crash on the floor.

Michael and I work together and play together. We get drunk together and back each other up in fistfights outside the bars. We hang out by the pool, enjoying the sunshine that’s so rarely part of our days and talking for hours about nothing of consequence.

We’re best friends, comfortable with each other in a way that implies we’ve known each other forever, even if it’s only been two years. We’re intimate without being sexual (not that I’d complain if we were); Michael doesn’t flinch if I lay a hand on his shoulder, I don’t think it’s weird to wake up with his arms wrapped around me. From an outside perspective, it probably looks strange, but there’s something about risking your life beside someone every time you go to work that makes it okay. I’m not as close with Geoff or Jack, but they’re also older than me. Geoff has a family to go home to and even Jack has his fiancé and their dog.

They have normal lives, in other words. They have things outside of work that Michael and I lack. Michael and I have each other and we’ve done a damn good job of convincing ourselves that we’re all we need.

Need is what brought Michael and I together in the first place. The need for someone to say that everything was okay now, that it was fine to turn your defenses down and relax. After hours on end of high-tension situations, of knowing any moment could be your last, it was difficult to simply become a normal person again. To not turn savage in the streets if you heard running footsteps behind you. To this day I don’t know how Michael found my apartment, but he did, and about two weeks after I joined the Hunters, he came knocking.

His face and knuckles were bloodied, large maroon stains standing out on his white t-shirt. I ushered him inside, unsurprised to smell alcohol on his breath. While I helped him out of his stained clothes, threw them into the bathtub and reminded myself to burn the clothing and bleach the porcelain, he explained in a not-quite-steady voice what had happened.

Jack had his dog and his girlfriend to go home to. Geoff had his family and, more importantly, his alcohol. Michael didn’t have anyone or anything, but he’d taken to hitting the bars after work. As he said, if he came home drunk he’d pass out, and if he ran into a problem he’d be less capable of fighting—and more than likely killing an innocent person—if he’d had a few.

That night hadn’t been any different for him, going bar hopping after work, letting himself be shuffled through crowds. That was when most of our work was still during the day, leaving plenty of hours to get good and pissed before the bars closed. Michael had every intention of drinking himself into a stupor, cabbing back to his place, and sleeping it off. He’d done it before, plenty of times.

“But there was this girl…” He was sitting on the closed lid of my toilet in only a pair of boxers, staring at the floor as he spoke and I cleaned his knuckles. It’s all he really needed to say, the rest of the pieces fell into place for me just then, but I let him continue on. He needed to get it out, I reasoned. “I don’t know, she sat next to me and so I said that I’d pay for her next drink if she wanted because, hey, a girl in a bar, right?” I can still remember the monotonous tone of his voice, the way he’d unsteadily inhale every few sentences as if trying to keep himself under control. Maybe he was.

“So I buy her next drink and then there’s some guy grabbing my shoulder and turning me around, screaming at me to stay the fuck away from his girlfriend and… and I don’t know. I think the bouncer threw us both out, or maybe I hit him first and got thrown out and he followed me, but… But suddenly I was in an alley, up against a wall. He’s taller than me, you know, like, not hard to do but he’s taller and he must think he’s stronger because of it. So he grabs my collar and—“ Michael’s hands clenched into fists at the memory, sending fresh blood oozing from the just-cleaned scrapes on his knuckles. I waited for him to relax before starting to clean them again.

“He hit me in the face, one good punch to the nose. I felt myself start bleeding and I just lost control. I don’t remember it too well, but like… the next thing I know he’s on the ground and I’ve got him pinned down and I’m punching him again and again—punching him in the throat. His face was all fucked up, I must have hit him in the face a lot. There was someone standing behind us screaming, and when I stood up and looked over it was her, the girl I’d bought the drink for, she was screaming that I was… that I was killing him. Other people were coming out of the bar from the noise or something and I just… ran. I ran all the way here and didn’t stop until I was at your front door.”

Michael looked up at me then, and I remember how desperate his eyes were. He had a question, he had something he wanted to know the answer to. For the first time in a long time, I felt fear—real fear that I wouldn’t be able to give him the answer he needed.

“I’m not a killer, am I, Gavin? Am I some kind of… of bloodthirsty psychopath?” His eyes searched mine, causing something inside me to let loose. I hadn’t let myself get too close to anyone on the team until that moment. The way he shook when I put my arms around him and pulled his head to my chest is crystal-clear in my memory. Sometimes when I hug him now, I think I can still feel that shaking.

“You’re not, Michael.” It was the first time I’d spoken his name, and something in him seemed to let go to hear it—maybe the same something that I let go of. He held onto me then, still shaking, maybe he was crying or laughing or just relieved to be told that it was okay. I don’t know and I’ve never wanted to ask. Knowing too much about a person like that can be dangerous.

We’d been drawn together by a need and over time that need had slowly become the norm. We were comfortable with each other, we knew we could trust each other. That was all that mattered.

–

The Hunters are, technically, not mercenaries. It’s a careful distinction Geoff has had to make over the years—we’re a private security force, able to be hired on a short-term basis. We’re supposed to assist security forces already employed. Technically, we can be hired to protect things or people, but our forte is protecting data. An object is easy to protect—you stand enough people around it and drill into their heads again and again to only leave in pairs and it’s safe. Even a person is easy to protect. Contrary to popular belief, most people are extremely predictable in their actions. I’ve only ever met three truly unpredictable people in my life; two of them are dead at my hand and the third signs my paycheck.

Data, however, is much more challenging to protect. There are so many vulnerabilities. Each person that has access to the data increases the risks exponentially. Geoff signs us up for almost every data protection job, no matter how mundane it sounds. They’re hardly ever boring.

Michael joined a few months before I did, after a chance meeting with Jack that caused our bearded intelligence specialist to suggest him to Geoff. Geoff hired me personally, helping me forge documents to get into the country and begin working for him. We met in Europe while I was working for a security firm that he’d been hired to assist and when he’s particularly drunk, Geoff will clap a hand across my back and declare that I was the only person with any competence in the entire place. He’ll go on about how he _had_ to have me as part of the Hunters, because he couldn’t imagine me wasting my raw talent in a place like that.

I think by ‘raw talent’ he meant ‘lack of will to live,’ but I’d never vocalize that. It comes too close to far too many truths.

After that first bloodied night in my apartment, Michael and I started hanging out after work more. There were more jobs coming in all the time and we both found ourselves on edge, having difficulty turning off the survival instinct even with the company. Somehow we worked each other through it, though, and now we manage pretty well.

Michael coped with anger at first, with yelling and screaming at even minor things, working himself into a fit of rage that normally didn’t cease until I did something drastic. Back then I had humor to get me through it and that was always part of what made us so perfect for each other. When he got pissed I’d laugh at him and piss him off more, which made me laugh more, until one of us tackled the other and we would roll around on the floor punching and shouting and laughing. By the time we worked it out of our systems we were exhausted and something in the room with us was normally broken.

Luckily for our belongings, we don’t do that very often anymore.

Over the years, Michael has taught me a lot. How to hurt people, how to care about people, how to rip lives apart and paste myself together. He showed me how to properly shoot more guns than I think I’ll ever actually use and how to cook a perfect omelet. In return I showed him how to throw knives, how to cut ties with his past, how to let go of old pain and take in new experiences. I also showed him how to hack vending machines and, of all the strange things, I think I was his first kiss.

Michael and I have taught each other a lot of things. He’s the one who taught me that it doesn’t hurt to lie to people you love.


End file.
